Welcome to this bilingual (Swedish-English) group blog by family members living on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, "the pond". Our interests range from the scientific to the eclectic, including gourmet food, horses, art and literature, computers, species in nature, history and iron, and photography. Three generations are posting here.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

This stamp from Slovenia features Canis lupus, the grey wolf. A few days ago I saw my first wild wolf ever, in Yellowstone National Park where wolves were reintroduced in 1995. They started with 31 wolves, now there are 13 packs and a total of over150 wolves. I saw wolves three different times in the park, all very far away, but you could still make them out as large dogs living in packs. We heard them howling too, together with coyotes. I remember 'moster WM' talk about how she saw a wolf pack on the ice of a lake in northern Sweden in the 1920s from a train - it was probably one of the last before they became extinct. Now Sweden have wolves again of course, but they are not doing as well as in Yellowstone where there is more space and less people than in Sweden. Many of the Yellowstone wolves are black, totally black, which I thought was unusual. We heard the wolves howling when we were watching a meteorshower one early dawn, before the sun came up. Talk about magical moment - shooting stars and howling wolf packs.

I loved seeing and hearing the wolves, it made me so happy. I much rather meet a wolf in the forest than a bear or a mad moose.

5 comments:

We heard both at the same time - wolves on one mountain behind us (long howling), and coyotes 'answering' on the mountain ahead of us, and their sounds were more high-pitched and 'yipping'. I wouldn't have know the difference either unless told, but there was a big difference in the sounds. The sounds also travel miles.

Another time we heard and saw wolves howl at the same time, in our binoculars.

Hehe, reminds me when I was working as a bike messenger and had a delivery close to Rosendal on Djurgarden, behind Skansen (a zoo and open air museum). This was in the winter, december or january, late in the day and with a raising full moon. Biking on the badly lit, snowy road to the sound of the howling wolves at the zoo was quite an experience, it wasn't like you were in the middle of a big city at all.

Do you think there is some genetic predisposition in humans based on living with wolves for 100 000 years to get an eerie scared feeling when we hear wolves? I know they have done tests and showed that babies are inherently afraid or cautious when they see snake and spider shapes, maybe it is the same for wolves? But bears are MUCH more dangerous than wolves, at least in Yellowstone.

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